and has been dealt with above.
    Accordingly, the requisite strength being given to the motives that are to
drive the driver, there has never, or hardly ever, been an instance of a man
stopping his engine through wantonness. But such a case might occur; yes, and it
might occur that the engine should break down; but if the train is stopped from
some trivial motive it will be found either that the strength of the necessary
influences has been miscalculated, or that the man has been miscalculated, in
the same way as an engine may break down from an unsuspected flaw; but even in
such a case there will have been no spontaneity; the action will have had its
true parental causes; spontaneity is only a term for man's ignorance of the
gods.
    Is there, then, no spontaneity on the part of those who drive the driver?«
    Here followed an obscure argument upon this subject, which I have thought it
best to omit. The writer resumes: »After all then it comes to this, that the
difference between the life of a man and that of a machine is one rather of
degree than of kind, though differences in kind are not wanting. An animal has
more provision for emergency than a machine. The machine is less versatile; its
range of action is narrow; its strength and accuracy in its own sphere are
superhuman, but it shows badly in a dilemma; sometimes when its normal action is
disturbed, it will lose its head, and go from bad to worse like a lunatic in a
raging frenzy; but here, again, we are met by the same consideration as before,
namely, that the machines are still in their infancy; they are mere skeletons
without muscles and flesh.
    For how many emergencies is an oyster adapted? For as many as are likely to
happen to it, and no more. So are the machines; and so is man himself. The list
of casualties that daily occur to man through his want of adaptability is
probably as great as that occurring to the machines; and every day gives them
some greater provision for the unforeseen. Let anyone examine the wonderful
self-regulating and self- contrivances which are now incorporated with the
vapour-engine, let him watch the way in which it supplies itself with oil; in
which it indicates its wants to those who tend it; in which, by the governor, it
regulates its application of its own strength; let him look at that store-house
of inertia and momentum the fly-wheel, or at the buffers on a railway carriage;
let him see